Phase cut dimming is a popular technique for providing dimming control for lighting systems. Conventional phase cut dimmers generally include over-current protection to protect against current overload conditions. Current over-current protection provided by conventional phase cut dimmers, however, is typically inflexible and does not provide suitable protection for a variety of different types of lighting loads.
Generally, to provide over-current protection, many conventional phase cut dimmers measure a current provided to the lighting load and compare it to a single, static threshold. When the measured current exceeds the threshold, over-current protection is applied. As a result, over-current protection can be triggered when the threshold is set too low for a lighting load that frequently draws relatively high peak currents during normal operation, such as, for example, a light emitting diode (LED) load. Relatedly, inadequate over-current protection can result when the threshold is set too high for a lighting load that draws relatively low peak currents during an over-current event, such as, for example, an incandescent load.
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to provide improved over-current protection for phase cut dimmers to support different types of lighting loads. It is with these considerations that the present disclosure is put forth.